Page 3 – Physical Look – Inside
After removing the tempered glass and steel side panels, you can see the internal design of the Cooler Master HAF 700. To be consistent with the exterior, the interior of the case is also painted matte black. The paint is evenly distributed inside the chassis. By default, the air intake is from the front and bottom. The main air intake from the front comes from two Cooler Master SickleFlow 200mm ARGB PWM fans. As for the air intake from the bottom, there is a Cooler Master SickleFlow 120mm ARGB PWM fan preinstalled from the factory. The Cooler Master HAF 700 is quite flexible for its cooling solution configuration, thanks to the large amount of space. Note the CPU heatsink clearance for this product is 166mm, which is pretty good. The case can fit graphics cards up to 490mm in length, which is longer than anything I have ever seen personally. There is no GPU support bracket for horizontally mounted long and heavy graphics card though.
As a full tower that is designed to accommodate lots of large components, the Cooler Master HAF 700 can support E-ATX in addition to regular ATX motherboards, and of course, smaller boards such as mATX and mITX. I noticed all the risers were screwed on to the tray already from the factory. Users do not need to install the required risers according to the size of motherboard that will be used. After bolting the motherboard into position, the heatsink or water cooler block can then be easily installed and removed thanks to the big rectangular opening on the tray.
From the above photo, you can see there are two Cooler Master SickleFlow 120mm ARGB PWM fans from the factory on the case’s rear exhaust opening. Thanks to the PWM support, the fan can easily be controlled by the motherboard. Having some preinstalled fans is always a good thing, unless in a very unlikely situation, the user wants to use an all-in-one water-cooling system and having the radiator mounted at the rear exhaust. In that case, it would require an extra step to remove the preinstalled 120mm ARGB PWM fans. However, you can also mount the radiator to the top panel. This top grille area can hold up to two 360mm radiator side-by-side or a single 420mm radiator. The top grille is also removable for easy installation of the cooling components.
For the Cooler Master HAF 700, the power supply unit is mounted behind the motherboard tray. This design allows the bottom of the case to provide a large ventilation area that can be used for air intake. Thanks to the two large plastic stands, the chassis is raised about 40mm off the ground in order to guarantee the airflow from the bottom side. To pump the air into the case from the bottom, there is also a rotatable fan or radiator bracket that can hold three 120mm or 140mm fans, as shown in the above photo. The rotatable design can make the airflow blowing right toward the graphics card for better cooling performance. If the user wants to put a radiator on the bottom, the rotatable bracket can hold a radiator up to 420mm long. The grille on the bottom also has a removable dust filter pre-installed to reduce the amount of dust incoming. The dust filter is reinforced by plastic frame and easily slides in and out. Also, as you can see from the above photo, the expansion slot covers of this chassis feature stamped holes for enhanced airflow, but I would prefer for it to be a solid piece for a clean look, since I really doubt it makes a significant difference to just have several small holes here.
From the above photo, the front of case has a large opening for the two preinstalled 200mm fans. There is no obstruction near the two front-mounted fans, which makes for free-flowing air. For cooling performance, this case can accommodate decent cooling solutions. For example, you can have two 420mm radiators mounted on the top and bottom panels. If your radiator size is 480mm, you can put it at the section that is between the motherboard tray and the front panel. That aside, you can also have a lot of fans installed. If you really want some consistent looking cooling solution, I would suggest getting two more Cooler Master SickleFlow 120mm ARGB PWM fans and put them alongside the preinstalled one at the bottom. The lightly tinted tempered glass side panel will allow the light to shine through. To keep the computer components clean, the whole front panel can also be easily removed.
Upon removing the right side panel, you will see the other side of the motherboard tray and the PSU chamber behind it. In the Cooler Master HAF 700, the power supply chamber is designed differently compared to other computer cases in the market. Firstly, the location of the PSU chamber is behind the motherboard tray. As opposed to the conventional configuration, the benefit of this design is that the bottom of the case has more space for ventilation, hence it is possible to have that rotatable fan/radiator bracket mounted on the bottom. Secondly, this PSU chamber features a tool-free installation design. There are two dowel pins and two thumb screws to align and fasten the power supply unit in place. As for the PSU ventilation, there is a grille with a mesh filter on the side panel that can provide enough airflow to the PSU air intake. Above the PSU chamber, there is a tool-free removable HDD cage that can hold a maximum of four 3.5" HDD with brackets. As for 2.5" drives, you can screw them on the tool-less multifunctional brackets. You can see three of those brackets on the left side of the motherboard tray.
There are two controllers included here at the back, near the drive cage. The first at the top is to synchronize the addressable RGB LED lighting from all of the included fans and their PWM fan signal. This is then connected to a fan header on your motherboard to control the fans. However, this controller is also connected to another addressable RGB LED lighting controller, which then can connect to your motherboard via a micro USB to internal USB 2.0 header. This lets you control the lighting using Cooler Master's MasterPlus+ software utility.
Regarding cable management, between the motherboard tray and the right side panel, the room for cable routing is about 90-101mm, which is way more than enough. Furthermore, the I/O connector cables are pretty much the same as what you would find from any other case. According to the above picture, there are two clips provided from factory to tie the cables. The plastic clips feel sturdy, but was pretty stiff on first use. Given the two clips and the massive space, I think the cable routing of this case should be really easy and straightforward. You can still use zip ties or Velcro straps for cable management, but none are included. If you do not have time for a super nice cable management, you can just use the provided cover to hide everything. Otherwise, there are eight large openings with rubber grommets in total to route cables, with four of them are actually on the edge of the motherboard tray. There is no need to worry about the safety of the cables or your fingers during installation thanks to these grommets.
Generally speaking, the interior design of the Cooler Master HAF 700 is very good. All of the components you need for building a computer can be nicely accommodated and kept cool. The paint job quality of the interior is also good. More importantly, there is tons of room to mount large radiators, and there are big openings to allow easy connections between the power supply and the rest of the components.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. Physical Look - Outside
3. Physical Look - Inside
4. Installation and Conclusion
